


Grumpy Old Men

by likethenight



Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Grumpy Old Men, Male Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 09:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4474538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethenight/pseuds/likethenight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky and Logan, on the terrace at Avengers Tower, drinking beer and comparing notes on the youth of today and how hard they had it in their respective younger days. Guest appearance by JARVIS and his trademark sass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grumpy Old Men

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written over a year ago in response to a prompt on Tumblr from my friend Biz, who wanted to see Bucky and Wolverine being grumpy old men competing about how bad things are now and how bad they were back in their day. It rather got away from me, as these things do, and it’s turned into rather a mixture of MCU and 616, and it isn't entirely canon-compliant to either, but still. Here. Have some grumpy old men. :D (unbetaed and un-US-picked, although I suspect it needs it. I am open to US-picking on this one!)

"Kids, today," Bucky begins, shooting Logan a sideways look, as though he's feeling his way into the conversation. He does that a lot, still; he's still not entirely comfortable with normality, or what passes for normality around here. 

"Kids," Logan says, taking a swig from his beer, his cigar still held firmly between his teeth. Bucky wonders what on earth that tastes like. They're sitting on the balcony outside the bar at the top of Avengers Tower, and despite himself Bucky feels like it ought to be a porch, or a stoop somewhere in Brooklyn, two old guys drinking beer and complaining about the youth of today.

Bucky waits for a moment, but Logan doesn't say anything else, so he has to figure out what it was he was going to say, and construct a sentence. It takes a moment or two, and a couple of mouthfuls of beer. "Kids," he says again, eventually. "They're so…I don't know, jesus, were we ever that…" He trails off, looking for the words; this happens a lot too, as his mind recovers from the brutal treatment it's undergone for the last seventy-odd years. The connections are still repairing themselves, synapses and neural pathways and all that science stuff that Dr Banner was talking about back when he first came in, Steve and Sam at his shoulders, Natasha at his back. 

"Yeah," says Logan, "you were," and Bucky blinks, another memory slotting into place, of Logan and…and someone else, someone bigger, the shape and the name sliding out of his grasp, but the pair of them scrambling over a wall, the Commandos following, a lot of pain and death and mud…he knows, with the part of his brain that is in the here and now, that he knew Logan back then, Steve told him, and when Logan first showed up at the tower he'd looked Bucky up and down and grunted "Good to see ya, kid," and Bucky had nodded automatically, he'd known by then but he hadn't actually _remembered_ until now. Logan had seemed like a cranky old man even then, and Bucky hasn't quite managed to get his head round how he's still here, still the same. But then there are more than enough of them like that, now. 

"Yeah," Bucky tries again, "but really? I mean, I was a mouthy little punk back then, but I wasn't…I wasn't disrespectful. None of them now, none of them seem to have any respect for…well, for authority."

Logan chuckles. "Seems to me you didn't either, back then. All yes sir, no sir to their faces, but behind their backs you were just as much of a little shit as any of my kids now."

Bucky grins despite himself, because the idea of Logan as a headmaster is genuinely the most hilarious thing he's heard of in decades. "Even that kid with the pink hair? He seems pretty…well, I don't know, Steve seems to have a soft spot for him, but to me he's just…" 

"Quire?" Logan lets out a bark of laughter. "He's a dangerous little shit, but you know what? He chooses to stay at my school rather than the bunker full of militants and child soldiers, so I figure there's something decent in him. Somewhere. Though I'll grant you he makes it fucking hard to find."

Bucky pulls a face and takes another mouthful of beer, because he absolutely cannot disagree with that assessment. "I don't know, they just…they just have so much we never had. All that technology, all that food, everything in the stores…we were lucky to find enough to keep us going, most of the time, unless Mrs Angelotti or Mr Silverstein had something spare for us if we went past their back doors at the right time." He shrugs. "They both had restaurants, and they both kinda had a soft spot for me and Steve, I guess." Somehow the memories of  _back then_ come easier to him than memories of the war.

Logan chuckles. "Still plenty of kids in that situation today, don't you go foolin' yourself. 'Sides, if you wanna talk hard times, you ain't got nothin' on me, even if you did walk uphill both ways to school in the freezin' Brooklyn cold. I grew up in the wilderness, kid, and my brother turned out to be my worst enemy, not my best friend, so you got a long old way to go. Also it was Canada, and let me tell you, _that_ is cold."

Bucky laughs despite himself. "Okay, okay, you win." He feels oddly comfortable around Logan, the way the grumpy old Canuck doesn't mince his words, doesn't beat around the bush. No awkward silences here, just the truth plainly told. 

"Damn straight I win," grunts Logan. "Look, kid, I'll be plain with you. We've both been through some shit we never ought to have had to go through. We all have." He makes an expansive gesture with his beer bottle, apparently taking in the whole tower, and possibly half of New York with it. "The job we have is to make sure that the kids of today, they don't have to go through anything like it. They probably will anyway, we'll probably fail, but what we have to do is our best - whatever that happens to be." He snorts. "Kids today don't know they're born. It's our job to keep 'em that way."

Bucky thinks about it for a moment, and decides that it makes sense. It's as good a purpose as any, and he's been lacking in that since Steve and the others brought him in. "To kids not knowing they're born," he says, and he clinks his bottle against Logan's.

"I'll drink to that." Logan drains his beer. "Speaking of which, I take it there's more beer in Stark's fancy fridge-o-matic over there?"

JARVIS answers smoothly before Bucky can even open his mouth. "I can assure you that Mr Stark's bar is fully stocked at all times. Despite the best efforts of certain members of the household." The AI's tone is rich with suppressed humour and sarcasm, and Bucky marvels for the thousandth time at this amazing piece of technology, so far in advance of anything even Howard could have imagined. Steve confided in Bucky early on that it helped him to think of JARVIS as a very polite and competent British man who lived in the ceiling, and once Bucky got over feeling thoroughly disturbed by that, he found that it helped him, too. JARVIS might be a computer, but he very definitely has a personality, and Bucky is wary of things without personalities - he'd been one himself for so long, after all. He'd rather think of JARVIS as a person, as a friend. Someone who wouldn't harm him, ever.

"Thanks, JARVIS," Bucky says, getting to his feet and going to fetch another couple of beers from the - indeed very well-stocked - refrigerator. 

"My pleasure, Mr Barnes, Mr Logan. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"Not unless you can tell us why kids today are disrespectful little shits," Logan says, and Bucky laughs out loud again. There's a brief pause before JARVIS responds, only a moment that tells the two of them that he's researching Logan's query.

"It seems, sirs, that every generation of young people seems more disrespectful and more dangerous to the generation before. Documentary sources as far back as I can access are all agreed that children are impertinent, wayward, and only three or four steps removed from organised crime. It seems that positive role models are the agreed solution."

Logan snorts, and Bucky grins. "Seems like Steve's got his work cut out then," he says, and he hands Logan a fresh bottle of beer, clinking his own against it in another half-assed toast. He's joking though, at least a little bit. He's not sure what sort of positive role model he could ever be, but he likes the idea of it, somehow, a little bit of atonement for all he's done, all he was made to do. After all, if Logan can be a headmaster, surely Bucky can learn to be something other than a broken killing machine.

"Seems like he does," says Logan. "Kids today. Need all the guidance they can get."

And Bucky can't help but agree with that.


End file.
